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1988 comanche destined for the scrap yard, getting it going again


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I rescued my first vehicle and first Comanche a couple months ago, picked it up for $800 and brought it home. Only other offers the previous owner got were for the bed and nothing else. I was the only person who wanted the whole thing. It was mostly torn down with the motor and transmission missing, but luckily we have a 91 XJ sitting around that I've been robbing parts off of. The XJ is in rough shape body wise, but in good mechanical shape.
The comanche isn't perfect by any means, no... It has literally no options except the sliding window (the seats are out of a 2 door XJ and aren't original) The floors and frame need love and the windshield is destroyed, but it's a fixer upper.
I've already got a bunch of stuff fixed, and put the 4.0 from the XJ into the truck. I need to do a lot of harness work to mate up the 91 harness to the 88 connectors, but it seems like all I need to modify is the rear harness, as I'm swapping all the front electrical stuff from the XJ in, including the AC from it.
I have a big list of parts I'm gonna get eventually and I still need to get a driveshaft and fuel lines to actually run the truck, but everything I have found so far works.

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Well, I was climbing up under the truck today and noticed the leaf springs are severely deformed and the center leaf on both sides is broken! Guess I need new springs, too. Frame rails are pretty crusty but the crossmembers aren't too too bad. I need to do a lot of rust repair.

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Luckily for me, the donor Jeep has a really good overall setup, a 4.0 with an AW4 and NP231 transfer case. Engine ran good before it suddenly stopped running, the transmission shifted great despite being abused, and the transfer case always went into 4WD easily. I need to find out what gear ratio the rear end in the truck has and eventually regear the truck's axle or the donor front axle, as I want 4wd at some point.
Truck has 143,000 miles and the donor jeep has between 170,000 and 180,000.

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easiest way to check ratio is to jack up one tire and rotate it around exactly twice while counting the number of times the driveshaft spins.  3 and a half is 3.55 etc.  :L:  if the axle is a posi you need to jack up both tires and spin them once. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I put some more stuff back in the truck, and then sat there wondering what to do, so I decided to pull the fiberglass off the fenders to reveal just how bad the fenders were. Already knew they were cut, so I wasn't expecting much. Driver's side was one sheet of fiberglass with paint on it, and the passenger side was about 15 pounds of bondo. 
Honestly, I feel better knowing that the isn't as bad as I thought it was. (there's so much missing because they cut out the fender to get rid of the rust, then slathered it in bondo instead of fixing it properly, so it's rusted more.) The only rust on the bed is on the fenders, the bed sides are clean, so I don't know why the bondo goes like a full 18 inches in front of the rust. I need to get patch panels eventually, but that's not exactly an urgent concern. I'll throw some paint on the rust to keep it from spreading.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 7 months later...

Been pretty busy with work lately, but I've been slowly making progress and gathering parts. D30 is out from under the parts jeep and ready to go under it. While I'm under the MJ with the front axle off, I'm gonna start working on the frame work, though it's gonna be a bit annoying working around the engine.

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  • 3 months later...

Bit of progress has been made, but not a lot. D30 is in, and tailgate is hooked up properly and latching with a set of used tailgate brackets. Still need to get the axle fully bolted up but it's not of major concern for now. Unfortunately but also fortunately, I ended up buying myself a sweetheart of an XJ that is gonna be great for getting back and forth to work until the MJ is finished, and it should be super nice for figuring out where connectors and other things go or are put together, especially considering that the parts XJ was half torn apart already when I got it.
At this point, the MJ project is on hold until key parts releases the floor pans for it, and until it cools down enough for me to finish cutting all the bodywork out of the parts XJ that I need for both vehicles (mainly the rear quarters and trans tunnel).

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Probably will just torch them out when I get to the rust repair. I think what I'm gonna do for now is work on the doors, the shells are shot and the lock cylinders are broke, so I think I'm gonna swap the internals and windows from the MJ doors to the doors off the parts XJ, which is gonna be super fun.

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Yet another little annoyance with this truck... I have one gray door panel that's been torn up to get to the door speaker without taking the panel off, and one red one. Probably gonna see if anyone wants to trade the red one for a pair of gray ones, or maybe just sell the red one and buy a pair of gray ones.

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I started pulling the doors off the parts Jeep because the door shells and locks on my doors are completely shot. Only got 4 bolts out, and of course the last 2 on the driver's door stripped.

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Forgot to post this, but I had a small victory. Got the doors off with no broken bolts and no damage to the doors, and also found some parts I was missing for my power steering pump. Next course of action is mass rivet removal to get the window mechanisms out and swapped, though that's gonna be a little annoying considering the power got knocked out to the shed...

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